Chiapas
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[edit] History of Chiapas
In Pre-Columbian times Chiapas was part of the heartland of the Maya civilization.
Chiapas was conquered by Spain in the early 16th century, and became part of the Viceroyalty of New Spain, administered as part of the "Kingdom of Guatemala" (what is now Central America), administered from Antigua Guatemala.
When Central America achieved its independence from Mexico in 1823, western Chiapas was annexed to Mexico. More of current day Chiapas was sized after the disintegration of the Central American Federation in 1842, and the remainder of the current state taken from Guatemala in the early 1880s by President Porfirio DÃaz.
Chiapas remained one of the parts of Mexico least affected by change, with the descendants of the Spanish continuing to exercise much control over the native Indians through such institutions as debt peonage, despite attempts by the central Mexican government to abolish such practices.
In 1868 there was an armed native rebellion, led by the Tzotil Maya, that almost succeeded in taking San Cristóbal, then the state capital, before it was suppressed by the Mexican army.
Some people in Chiapas felt that their poor and largely agricultural area had been largely ignored by the Mexican government for a long time. One of the chief complaints was that many Indian farmers were required to pay absentee landlords, despite the fact that since the 1920s the Mexican government had been promising the peasants ownership of the land they had farmed and lived on for generations. Such dissatisfaction led to the rise of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (Zapatistas, or EZLN), which began an armed rebellion against the Mexican government in 1994. The Zapatistas were only marginally successful militarily, but they and their appointed spokesperson, Subcomandante Marcos, succeeded in attracting sympathy both in Mexico and overseas.
This page is part of the World Guide.
Afghanistan, Algeria, Argentina, Australia, Bolivia, Chiapas, Finland, France, Greece, Hungary, Latvia, Russia, Rwanda, United States, Venezuela
